The Pacific

All in all (dare I say it about a Spielberg-Hanks collaboration?) I was kind of -meh-, about The Pacific. I really,really wanted to like the series therefore I absolutely enjoyed it. But seeing you had no choice but to compare it to BoB it was kind of a let down.

I loved how the Taxi driver acknowledged how bad the "GIrines" had it, when he explained he jumped into Normandy. So many of those soldiers had so much class.

I can't figure out why but I just did not like Leckie's character. He was such a ridiculous antagonist at times that he just made me uncomfortable on the screen. The scene with him and the newspaper editor was probably designed to make you like his arrogant persona, it just didn't jive with me. The line "I would have taken five" was so well written but it just didn't feel right with the character or quite possibly the actor. I had liked Leckie earlier so I'm not sure what happened (most likely.......enter SNAFU the ultimate scene stealer.....) I also thought the whole "fight for television" sequence was stupid. Although you have to feel for the guy, could you have gotten a colder reception from your folks??

Generally The Pacific showed a much more darker and dismal side of War. From the asylum Leckie was in, to "digging for Jap gold" and ending with the clear and massive post traumatic stress that Sledge had, it was allot harder to watch. I still have such ridiculous respect for all the men that fought in WWII and it still gives me a pang of guilt or maybe even embarrassment for not serving my own country. Silly I know.

Who knows? Maybe second time around The Pacific is much, much better. I remember having a little confusion in BoB the first time around as to who was who, but nothing like this. To conclude while BoB is an obvious "A" I would probably give The Pacific a "B-" definitely worth watching, absolutely above average but not worth running out and spending $70 on the DVD. (Even though I most likely will)

 

To me The Pacific seems like it should have come before BoB. It just seemed like the storytelling wasn't that good and the continuity of the episodes were off. To me, BoB is done perfectly so you'd think that came after and they fixed the issues they have with The Pacific. All in all though I did enjoy it and am glad I watched it. I just wish they would have spent more time with the soldiers on the islands rather than a episode of two episodes with Basilone selling bonds and then him finding his wife. You could have summed those up a lot shorter and made more of Iwo Jima and Pelieliu. Those to me just seemed skimmed over and rushed.

 

"Band of Brothers" definitely benefitted from the single-source adaptation (Ambrose's book), something "The Pacific" couldn't reproduce. I agree with Mike Ness in that the series will probably age well with a second viewing (over 10 hours vice weeks, too), and I'm definitely going to rent it and watch it because the story was powerful enough to warrant it.

However, there were two things that made "The Pacific" much harder to follow than BoB. The first was the tri-partite protagonists. BoB certainly had a slew of characters, but intuitively we always knew we were following the tale of Easy Company. The story/campaign and the company were inextricable*, but in TP it was a struggle to follow all three with the same emotional investment over two and a half months. I thought the Leckie episodes set in Australia and the hospital were great, but I was surprised at how underwhelmed I was when he got wounded on Peleliu because by that time I was more interested in Sledge's story (bolstered by the presence of Snafu, of course). And, I think because of that narrative disconnect the final segment that recapped the post-war lives of the Marines was way, way less emotional than watching the softball scene at the end of BoB. I don't know what they could have done differently, though, and I do feel a bit bad criticizing them for something that may have been executed as well as humanly possible.

That said, I have no problem criticizing the sometimes imperceptible nighttime battle scenes on Guadalcanal. I'll admit I was extremly disinterested in the early Leckie/Basilone storylines due to this. I can appreciate the realistic slant the producers wanted to go for, but it's probably something many fans of BoB and its creative predecessor Saving Private Ryan weren't expecting. But, like I said, it might make more sense on second viewing.




*I would like to say that Tom Hank's narrated framing prologues before the episodes, complete with graphics, were extremely helpful and deserve mention.